Paul Connolly • 3 min read
Autumn is a season of change. While many poets refer to spring as the season of rebirth, I tend to think of the fall more as the marking of a new life cycle. September has always been my favorite month, when the heat and humidity yield to cooler, drier air. It’s generally a much more pleasant time in my view. While spring is nice, it also marks the nearing of oppressive summer heat in the Washington, DC, area where I live.
David A. Smith • 5 min read
Never in my professional experience has a government defendant so cavalierly offered up a gratuitous admission against interest as did President Biden the day the Centers for Disease Control “independently” announced that it had miraculously discovered authority to reimpose a nationwide eviction moratorium.
Darryl Hicks • 12 min read
In the fall of 2019, Gilbert Winn, the CEO of Boston-based WinnCompanies, formed a task force to explore new ways to reduce eviction rates within the company’s affordable housing portfolio. Five months later COVID-19 hit, but the task force continued to meet and hash out ideas and best practices that would be refined throughout 2020.
Paul Connolly • 3 min read
Seems like I got a lucky draw when I was born in the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world. I was fortunate to be alive for the final Apollo mission when Americans last set foot on the surface of the moon. As a kid, I watched the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981 and with 135 missions over 30 years, they hardly made the news anymore by the time I was an adult.
David A. Smith • 6 min read
As I showed in last month’s Guru, under-reinvested urban neighborhoods are left behind or shortchanged on economic capital, political capital, municipal infrastructure, coordinated government policy and local income and earning power.
Paul Connolly • 3 min read
In this issue, we look to the states to see when and how this new funding will make its way into local affordable housing markets around the country. As the director of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency notes, this is a “bespoke” industry where no two deals are exactly alike. That presents a challenge as states are figuring out how to deploy all these new resources and are stepping up to the plate to do so equitably and effectively. Many states will use it to help address the housing disparities JCHS cites in its report. Make no mistake, this investment is such that hasn’t been seen since the start of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program decades ago.
David A. Smith • 6 min read
As the pandemic has demonstrated, for people to be healthy, their homes must be healthy, and for homes to be healthy, their communities must be healthy. Work we’ve been doing for the last half a year in Black neighborhoods of Milwaukee has uncovered six deeply rooted and mutually reinforcing causes of unhealthy neighborhoods due to contagious underinvestment:
Darryl Hicks • 11 min read
Exciting things are going on in Wisconsin. There’s a pilot program soon getting underway that will examine opportunities for expanding access to affordable workforce housing.
Paul Connolly • 3 min read
This issue of Tax Credit Advisor focuses on asset management. We have several engaging articles on how to determine when to sell or hold properties, the relative success of using private placement and a look at how property managers and owners are preparing to restart inspections this month after being on hold for more than a year during the pandemic.
David A. Smith • 5 min read
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced last August that it was declaring a nationwide moratorium on all rental evictions, not just those in federally subsidized properties, I instantly thought, That’s unconstitutional. Somebody will sue the government and it’ll get overturned. Sure enough, on May 5, 2021 the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (DC for DC) did just that, and a good thing too, because well-met laws intended to offer short-term relief frequently do long-term damage – as I know from personal experience.
Darryl Hicks • 10 min read
Asset managing can be challenging in the best of times but add a global pandemic to the equation and companies have had to reevaluate best practices to ensure peak property performance.
Paul Connolly • 3 min read
Regular readers of this column know I’m a native of Maine, the “Pine Tree State.” As the nickname implies, it’s a place that has more forests than urban and suburban areas. All those trees have helped power Maine’s economic engine in the form of paper, logging and lumber mills. And remember that shortage of swabs for COVID-19 tests last year? Yep, lots of those wooden sticks with a cotton ball on the tip are manufactured in Maine.